Photon detectors are used in a number of applications including industrial inspection, environmental monitoring, testing of fibre optic cables and components, medical imaging, chemical analysis and scientific research.
Photon detectors are also important for many applications in quantum information technology, such as linear optics quantum computing, quantum relays and repeaters, quantum cryptography, photon number state generation and conditioning, and characterisation of photon emission statistics of light sources.
There is a continuing need to improve the photon detectors used in these applications.